Father kidnaps own son for financial gain

A father has been arrested for allegedly kidnapping his 9-year-old son for financial gain.

Police announced on Wednesday that Aman, who had gone missing from his home in Dilshad Garden on April 12, had been rescued from Umri Kalan in Uttar Pradesh.

The boy's freedom meant the arrest of his father, Mohammed Ayub and a relative, Kajim, who had helped him.

The absence of a ransom call had left the police intrigued. With no clues to work on, they made little headway even after raids on several places in Ghaziabad and Sambhal.

This was util April 17, when Ayub rushed to the police station to inform that the "kidnapper" had phoned to demand Rs 10 lakh for the release of the child.

The police traced the call to Bijnore in UP and cops took in for questioning a relative of Ayub, who had received a number of calls from the same phone that had been used to make the ransom demand. Investigations, however, cleared the person.

The police located the mobile shop that had supplied the SIM card used to make the ransom call.

The investigators turned to advance surveillance techniques to ascertain the location of the kidnapper's phone, they noticed that Ayub's phone number showed up in the same area as the kidnapper's phone on some occasions.

The police asked Ayub to explain this anomaly. They also confronted him with the SIM seller who identified him as the buyer.

Ayub broke down. Hoping to extort money from his wife's family to extricate himself from his debts, the desperate father had roped in Kajim and instructed him to take Aman to Bijnore and wait for things to calm down.

He later told Kajim to take the boy from Bijnore to Moradabad and Baryahi before going into hiding at Umri Kalan.

"Mounting debts and frequent demands by lenders had forced Ayub to resort to this extreme step," said DCP Singla. "The child's kidnapping also earned him the sympathy of his lenders."

The mystery of the ransom caller's contacts with the suspected relative was also solved when it became apparent that Ayub had made a few blank calls to his phone, not only to mislead cops but to frame him because he suspected the person of having an illicit relationship with his wife.